When more is less: CGI, spectacle and the capitalist sublime

Abstract/Description

This paper explores CGI as a mode of commodity consumption and asks to what extent the consumption of spectacle mimics the notion of the ‘sublime’ and to what extent this ‘sublime’ status can be applied to the commodity form more generally. In particular it examines the dialectic between material sensation (the realm of use) and cognitive abstraction (the realm of exchange) which mimic capital’s ideological sleight of hand which attempts to conceals the quantifiable under the exchangeable within the commodity. Close analysis suggest that such imagery cannot but revel in their ability to both literalise and fetishises number and quantity and hence negate their more properly sublime visual possibilities.